


like a saint

by Ashling



Category: Original Work
Genre: After torture—character A holds B as their wounds are being treated, Aftermath of Torture, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, for relationship tag: Spy/Enemy Spy (hurt spy)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24158461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: nobody could be purified by this unholy a fire, but then, Lily didn't need purifying in the first place.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	like a saint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingargents](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/gifts).



Here the pines were as thick as the clouds above, so that it felt like late evening and it was only noon. It had just begun to snow, lightly. The earth under Therese's cheek smelled rich and fraught with all the decaying remnants of leaves, insects, animals, possibly even other people who had fallen here too. She would be eaten up quickly. It was discouraging to think of having lived fifty years with nothing to show for it but the body that she came in, and to have that body disappear so quickly. But then there were worse graves. It was not optimism that made her constantly remind herself of these little things, it was a fear of oblivious self-centeredness that made _it could be worse_ recur, even when _it_ was her own off-the-books execution in the middle of pine wilds. The self-centeredness would be fine, but the obliviousness was dangerous. That was the key. Well, she was going to die. Why not indulge in a little undisciplined inner wailing? She’d never flinch but by God she could rail at them all on the inside, God included.

There was a thump beside him, and a moan, and she didn’t turn her head to look, but presently her left sleeve was getting sticky and wet with blood. Lily couldn’t leave her alone even in death, apparently, or wouldn’t. Was that supposed to be comforting? Was she comforted by that?

Se turned her head to look, and through the bits of dirt that clung, she saw a tangle of dirty blonde hair and a slice of green eye. The green eye winked.

“Two girls, one grave,” said a voice that rasped with a lifetime of cigarettes, except that Lily rarely smoked; she was just a different level of hoarse that day. 

“God, you never let up, do you?” Therese heard herself say. Lily’s power—the power to drive her beyond whatever limits she thought she had—still held. Therese had expected to have a peaceful, contemplative, thoroughly sullen bit of pre-death meditation. Not this, whatever this was. 

“Persistence is a useful thing.”

“You have the stubbornness of a donkey. It’s not the same.” And then something occurred to Therese. She jerked her head up, and Lily paused mid-retort. The grave that they were in was pretty deep, so looking around didn’t do her much good, except to reassure her that there was nobody standing there watching them.

“What?” said Lily.

“Why are we not dead yet?” 

There were zip ties around Therese's wrists and ankles, and her height had never come with grace, but she got to her knees and crawled, wormlike, up the side of the grave until her nose was level with the ground. There were three sets of footprints in the soft earth leading towards the grave; there was one set of footprints leading away. Something gleamed silver not foot away from her, and, sans glasses, she squinted. Ah. It was a knife. Mireille honored her debts after all.

“Good news,” said Therese.

“We’re not going to die?” said Lily, half-words, half-croaking.

“We’re still definitely going to die, but we have a shot at getting coffee first.”

“Oh, good,” said Lily. “I haven’t had coffee in three days.”

“I know.”

  
  
  


The road was only a ten minute’s walk away, turned to twenty minutes because Therese had to carry Lily all the way. She would have gone for the bridal carry—she deserved a bit of poetry in this muddy life—but Lily's back was still bleeding a little through her shirt, so Therese put her over one shoulder like a fireman. And then it was time for a bit of carjacking. Thank God for chivalry, she thought as she closed the trunk on the car’s previous owner, a round-faced farm boy who deserved a much nicer lunch break than this. When she got into the driver’s seat, she found that Lily had spread herself on her belly across the backseat. If they got into any black ice, Lily was almost certainly going out the windshield, but then, Therese had no better ideas. Sitting was clearly not an option. They were going to have to burn the car to a metal carcass later, though. Lily was getting blood all over.

“We’re going to the guy’s house,” Therese said. “It’s in the middle of nowhere; he’s got a wife, no kids. Easy.”

“And a coffee machine?”

“I didn’t check.”

“You should have,” said Lily. Her voice was getting fainter.

“I should have left you in the woods. Just about broke my back carrying you here.”

“Oh, please, you’re a gym rat. Bet you didn’t break a sweat.”

She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Lily’s eyes had closed. “Ungrateful bitch.”

“Eat my ass, Therese.” It was a thick-tongued murmur.

“Kind of late for the honeypot approach, isn’t it?” 

Very faintly: “I’ve already done it, haven’t I?”

By the time Therese had thought of anything she could afford to say to that, Lily was well and truly out, and no amount of insults, or even a sharp pinch to the arm, could rouse her.

  
  
  


She was almost entirely ready before Lily woke up. There was the farmer and his wife locked away in separate rooms, bound hand and foot, fed and watered, given plenty of reassurances that she wasn’t any sort of serial killer—though, with the sheer quantity of Lily’s blood around, that hadn’t been particularly successful. Then there was a couple cans of soup on the stove, warming up, and an ancient coffeepot rattling away, and a loaf of bread with butter. Then there was Sibyl, who looked every inch a wise old crone from some Shakespearian tragedy, except that her red and yellow floral muumuu rather ruined the effect. And then there was Sibyl’s massive first aid kit, which was bigger than a toolbox, plus a cooler containing not one but two units of blood. 

She did not ask Sibyl where the blood came from. She just hauled Lily into the bath, did whatever Sibyl told her to do, and tried not to throw up during the morphine bit or the transfusion bit. It was funny, how even at her age, having done all she had done, she still couldn’t stand the sight of needles. But it all went well, right up until Sibyl started peeling the remnants of Lily’s shirt away from her back, and Lily came to with a dull moan, scrabbling weakly at the white porcelain. 

She crouched low and angled her head so she could catch Lily’s bleary eyes, and she was grateful, for just a moment, that she had sound survival-related reasons to swear Sibyl to secrecy. Her voice was very soft, even to her own ears. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay.”

Lily slumped back down. “Ow,” she said, trying to make it petulant despite the rictus of pain on her face.

“I know,” Therese said, matching Lily’s tone with her own wry grin. Her hand went soft and slow in Lily’s hair, fingertips against scalp in long strokes. “Ready for some coffee?”

Lily laughed. The sound of it was ragged and wet, but it was still something. "Always. Unless there's a catch?" Her eyes flickered. "There is a catch. You're being kind."

"Sibyl's supplies are low right now, is the thing." Therese had become accustomed to telling people bad news, news far worse than this, but still, she braced herself. 

Lily just squinted a bit. "Who's Sibyl?"

Behind Therese, Sibyl waved. She was setting up. There were a few horrifying-looking implements, and then there were a some gallons of distilled water, which were what Therese chose to focus on. "I'm also low on morphine and totally out of ketamine."

"Good ol' Special K, huh. That's too bad. How about weed?"

"I'm not a drug dealer, I'm a doctor."

"Even better. Although..." Lily considered it. "No, doctor's better, I was right the first time."

"Thanks," said Sibyl, and then, to Therese: "Can you hold her? She might flail, and the last thing I need is a broken nose."

Therese's heart sank. She had known this would probably be her role, and yet she dreaded it like she dreaded almost nothing else. She got into the bath, tucking herself into the far end of it.

"So," she said, as evenly as she could, "Sibyl's gonna do up your back."

"And you're gonna hold me down." Lily shaped her mouth like a smile. "Very kinky."

"I don't..." Absurdly, Therese found herself fighting not to cry. 

"Is she good?" Lily said quickly, which put paid to that. It was like Lily was taking pity on her, and wasn't that fucked?

"Very good," Therese said. "You're not the first she's done up, afterwards."

"Your interrogator has a usual method, I take it."

Gabrielle did have torture down to an art. And the thing was, flogging was only step one. Flogging was what she did to put the victim at ease, make them think that she was some medieval type. Flogging was great for that; it had distinct strokes you could count, and it was, oh, all on the surface, and not at all inventive. Had Therese not interrupted when she did, the flogging would have quite soon turned into something else. But that was no comfort.

Therese settled for saying, "Yeah."

"Let's do it, then." Lily pressed her palms against the porcelain, lifted herself, and half-crawled into Therese's lap. "But don't hold me down. Not you." She did not look up when she said it. "I'll hold myself down. Tell Sibyl her nose will be fine."

Above Lily's head, Sibyl and Therese traded glances, Therese all but holding her breath. But she didn't need to worry. Sibyl had known her for long enough.

"Okay," Therese said, and then as best as she could, she gathered Lily up, hands gripping Lily's waist as hard as she dared, until Lily was draped over her, Lily's chin on her shoulder, and Therese's own head propped up by the wall. At a forty-five degree angle to the ground, like she was sitting in a pool chair, except everything around them was hard and cold and off-white. It could not be over soon enough, except that Lily was pressing into her in a way that was boneless and trusting, so unlike any way she had touched Therese ever before.

"Okay," Lily echoed. Her hands encircled Therese's biceps, fingers digging in already; and Therese had both of hers in the tangle of Lily's hair. 

Therese had never been a coward and was not about to start, but she was a pragmatist, so when Sibyl reached to start peeling away the shirt again, she shut her eyes tight. She could feel every flinch and gasp, and it took less than a minute before Lily began to cry, wrung-out and helpless, into her neck. It crescendoed into wracking sobs and then, when the last of the fabric was peeled away, just panting. 

_Maybe,_ Therese thought vaguely, and opened her eyes just in time to see Sibyl unscrewing the cap on one of those gallons of water. She shut her eyes again. When Lily screamed, she surged up against Therese, like she could escape into Therese's body somehow, and Therese was talking to her, saying things, telling lies _,_ be honest for once, about how it was okay and how it would be over soon. It was not over soon—Therese had never seen someone run out of tears to cry before—but it did end. It did end, eventually, and Therese was amazed to find the bathroom still in once piece and the world unmoved. That seemed cruel too.

"Change bandages every day, let me know if she gets an infection, and I'll have some better painkillers to you within the next twenty-four hours," said Sibyl matter-of-factly. Therese wanted to hit her for that, but also, she was grateful. There was no one else with Sibyl's skills who would have risked themselves for Therese. There was no one else who would have risked themselves for Therese, except the woman in her arms and a few more that were in the ground, so. As she thought this, Therese went back to stroking Lily's hair, more to comfort herself than anything else. Her nose was running badly but she didn't dare move anything but her hand. Lily had gone so motionless, she might be unconscious. 

"I'll pay you when I can," said Therese.

"I don't take cash or credit," said Sibyl. She stood. There was a huge, bedraggled pink splotch on her muumuu.

Therese had just enough presence of mind to say, "I'll pay you."

"Let's work it out later."

There was nothing left in Therese, so she nodded. 

"You are a fool," said Sibyl, as matter-of-factly as before, "but fools occasionally survive. I hope that is the case with you." The door shut behind her with a click. The house went motionless, save for the thrums of the heater. Lily was still clutching twin bracelets of deep bruises into Therese's upper arms, but it was possible that she was doing that while still unconscious. Except, no, because Lily moved her head a little, the better to nudge into the curve of Therese's neck.

Later, Therese would have to crawl out from under her and find a way to get her into a bed, and then double-check that the farmer and his wife weren't in danger or presenting danger, and then she'd have to go pick up the drugs at whatever drop point Sibyl chose, hoping that their messages hadn't been caught and traced, and there was the soup and the coffee, but for now. For now, the hard tile against her shoulders and the hum of the heater counted as respite. Lily's eyes were still closed, and that counted too. Therese began to sing.


End file.
